Kitty Anne

Her relationship with film has taken a lot of forms over the years. She has worked in front of and behind the camera, written for the screen, worked on the visual and production side of filmmaking, programmed films, presented them to audiences, served on festival juries and panels, moderated filmmaker conversations, written about movies, and produced screenings and events throughout North Alabama.

Those different experiences eventually became part of the same larger picture.

Working in film as a woman, Kitty has encountered many of the same barriers and frustrations that shaped her programming in the first place. Advocating for femme and queer artists has also meant navigating the assumptions, politics, and resistance that can come with asking for those voices to be given real space. Over time, those experiences made her increasingly interested in who gets supported, who gets programmed, who gets invited into the room, and who gets to feel that local film culture belongs to them.

That became one of the driving forces behind Hauntsville Film Fest, which centers genre films written, directed, or produced by women, femme-presenting, and nonbinary filmmakers. It also shaped Hello Huntsville Horror and Kitty’s broader programming, where creating a welcoming audience experience has always been as important as what appears on the screen.

Her work has increasingly extended throughout the Southern independent film community. Kitty regularly works with theaters, festivals, filmmakers, and other programmers as a guest programmer, presenter, moderator, juror, and panelist. She has also begun sharing what she has learned with emerging filmmakers who are trying to understand festival submissions and navigate the festival world themselves.

The more time she spent working in film, the more strongly she felt about the importance of building film culture locally. Southern audiences deserve access to a wider range of cinema. Southern filmmakers deserve engaged audiences in their own region. Women, queer artists, and other filmmakers whose work has historically had fewer paths to exhibition deserve more than occasional inclusion.

Reel South Cinema grew out of those years of experience.

It brings Kitty’s programming, festivals, writing, community events, advocacy, and relationships within the film world together under a nonprofit structure designed to let that work grow. For her, forming Reel South Cinema was a way to invest more deeply in the place she already lives and works, while creating more opportunities for the filmmakers and audiences she has spent years advocating for.

She is also a film writer and zine maker, creating independent publications that explore movies through history, identity, fandom, culture, and personal experience.

At the heart of her work is a belief that has only grown stronger with time: meaningful film culture can be built locally, and the South is worth building it for.